The Night Sentinel

In July 1862, camped on the James River in Virginia after a long and costly campaign, General Daniel Butterfield decided the regulation lights-out call was too harsh a thing to end a day with. He was not a musician and could not write music, so he worked out a softer sequence of notes by ear, humming and adjusting, and had his brigade bugler play it back to him until it was right.

Neighbouring brigades heard it across the camp and asked for the notes. It spread through the Army of the Potomac in weeks, was picked up by Confederate buglers who liked it too, and within a year both armies were putting their men to bed with the same twenty-four notes.

It became Taps. It began to be played at funerals during the war for the practical reason that a burial near the enemy could not risk the customary three volleys over the grave, so the bugler substituted the call. It has closed the day in American camps ever since, and it still ends every military funeral — a tune with no official words, invented in a tent one summer evening because a lights-out call sounded too abrupt.